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Neutering your male rats is costly and ineffective.We had read on the rat mailing list that in instances of unbridled male aggression, neutering that rat helped him become a kinder gentler rat. Besides, you were helping him avoid testicular cancer at a later age! We obviously don't have a representative sample, but here's what I learned about the whole thing. Some rats are just downright nasty but in the right setting, they can be happy and nice. Wolfman was our target for the neutering test. Of 10 brothers and 2 sisters, he was the only aggressive and snippy one. How did he get picked? It wasn't directly because of his "personality" but moreso the result of the territorial dispute that occurred between Nat-human, Slinky-rat, and Wolfman-rat (see "Sometimes you're part of the territorial dispute."). Dr. Bob thought we were nuts, but we were the customer so he did it. After a day at Dr. Bob's, Wolfman was a whole new, ahem, "man." He didn't change much though. I mean his balls disappeared but he wasn't any nicer. All in all it was just a $75 lesson that taught Wolfman to not steal human-Nat's bed. Of course we later discovered, by sheer chance, that all he wanted was to be left alone (see "Rats are social animals, but some just want to be left alone."). We never neutered anyone again.
 tip: When navigating through the RatTails, clicking on the image that looks like the image above will take you back to this table of contents!
Disclaimer: There are many non-sarcastic accounts and tips on the web regarding rat care. This is not
one of them. These are merely accounts of our experiences with rats, our perceptions of these experiences, where we've failed
and where we've succeeded. These accounts are here for two purposes:
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